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A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football
Little, Brown and Company
November 2013
On Sale: November 19, 2013
474 pages ISBN: 0316196797 EAN: 9780316196796 Kindle: B00BSEQ3F8 Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
The definitive portrait of day-to-day life in the
NFL, as told by the writer who was there
We
watch football every Sunday, but we don't really see it. By
spending a year with the New York Jets, Nicholas Dawidoff
explored the game in such an intimate way that he can now
put you right inside the NFL. Collision Low Crossers*
is a story that is part Paper Lion and part
Moneyball, part Friday Night Lights and part
The Office. In this absorbing, funny, and vividly
written narrative, he describes the Combine, the draft, the
practices, the strategy meetings, all while thinking deeply
about such fundamental truths and the nature of success and
disappointment in a massive and stressful collective
endeavor.
Most of what happens in today's NFL takes
place at team facilities, walled off from fans and, until
now, from writers. The New York Jets issued Dawidoff a
security code, a locker, and a desk in the scouting
department: for an entire year he lived with the team, from
early-morning quarterback meetings to edgy late-night
conversations. Dawidoff makes an emblematic NFL season come
alive for fans and nonfans alike.
Here is football
in many faces: the Jets' polarizing, brilliant, and
hilarious head coach, Rex Ryan; the general manager, whose
job is to support (and suppress) the irrepressible Ryan; the
defensive coaches and their in-house rivals, the offensive
coaches; players like the incomparable All-Pro cornerback
Darrelle Revis and the young, erratic quarterback Mark
Sanchez. Wise safeties, brooding linebackers, high-strung
cornerbacks, enthusiastic rookies, and even a well-read nose
tackle create a full portrait of obsessed men at work.
Dawidoff has written the book of depth and feeling
that football has long deserved, one that will forever
change the way people watch and think about the
sport.
* "Collision low crossers" is a phrase
defensive coaches use for the act of making legal contact
with any potential pass receiver within five yards of the
line of scrimmage. Beyond five yards, "collisioning" someone
becomes a penalty. The term also evokes the most fundamental
elements of the game--speed, aggression, the interplay
between space and time, and meticulously planned events that
likely will not come to fruition.
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